Amateur Radio responds to flooding in Kerala, India

Jayu VU2JAU reports that Radio Amateurs in the Indian state of Kerala are actively responding to this disaster. Flooding caused by monsoon rains and overflowing dams has currently killed over 300 people and left over 300,000 evacuated to relief camps.

They are using HF and VHF for both local and wide area communication between the Senior District Adminstrators and many of their local offices. Stations are working 24 hours a day on 7110kHz and 145.5MHz as well as a local 2m repeater at Idukki. The stations are involved in passing messages assisting the administration in running the evacuation, such as organising food, water, medicines etc..

The preparedness of Amateur Radio has been demonstrated to the State Disaster Management Authorities and Local Adminstrations before and is now being put to good use.

Many radio amateurs in the area ( too many callsigns to list here ) are already active and many more are ready to assist. Stations outside India are asked to help by avoiding QRM to their operations.